Mass spectrometry is capable of providing qualitative and quantitative information about a composition of both inorganic and organic samples. Mass spectrometry may be used to determine the structures and identities of a wide variety of complex molecular species. Mass spectrometers have been utilized to provide high-speed analysis of complex mixtures enhancing capacity for structure determination. High-capacity and high-speed analysis are two important factors in analytical instrumentation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,015,848 to Bomse, et al. describes methods and apparatus for utilizing analog or digital data acquisition and processing, and the teachings of which are hereby incorporated by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 6,253,162 to Jarman, et al. describes a method of identifying features in indexed analytical data for distinguishing a signal from noise and the teachings of which are hereby incorporated by reference. U.S. Pat. No. 6,487,523 to Jarman, et al. describes a method and apparatus for characterizing the presence of peaks in an indexed dataset for samples that match a reference species and the teachings of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
A number of different end users may access a given analysis tool to perform analysis operations. The end users may have different levels of experience with instrument usage and/or familiarity with programming the instrument. Further, the aim of one group of users may differ from another group of users. For example, chemists and non-technical users may focus on chemical analysis and not intricate details of mass spectrometry. However, some instruments have provided relatively inflexible user interface designs which may be overly complicated for novice users, or overly simplistic for sophisticated users.
Aspects of this disclosure provide analysis device operational methods and analysis device programming methods.